


Just Outside Bourg-la-Reine, 28 May 1637

by Anima Nightmate (faithhope)



Series: All For One and, well, you know the rest... [28]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Beginning of a Horrible Friendship, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Character Study, Class Differences, Drug Use, First Meetings, Franco-Spanish War, Gen, Narcotics, Negotiations, Power Dynamics, Power Play, Wartime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 14:14:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17045234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithhope/pseuds/Anima%20Nightmate
Summary: In the dark of a distant building, some unscrupulous people we haven’t met yet make plans.*Another instalment in the long series of pieces based around the black box that is the Musketeers during the Spanish War.





	Just Outside Bourg-la-Reine, 28 May 1637

He’s used to waiting. And this time of year it’s not the hardship it could be, the earth still breathing back warmth from the day. Bats skitter and flinch, a stutter of sensation through the twilight, and the sky turns pretty colours you can see the more clearly for the darkness. Nearby something is breaking into bloom, breathing out something sweet. It’s good to have time to notice that, for once.

Chances are good he’ll be late. If it were him? He’d come early, have the whole place mapped out. And then either wait openly, casually, or reveal himself hours later, only after the other party had fretted themselves into distraction. This one? He’d put money on him getting here maybe an hour late at most, but at least half that – just enough to show who’s supposed to be waiting for whom.

He smiles, dark and quiet, tilts his head back to rest it against the wall. Where other men would lay out cards or dice, he lays out the potential outcomes of this encounter.

Satisfied, he cons over other business matters until the rattle of a carriage, approaching at a circumspect trot, slows to a walk. He draws further back, certain that darkness, and the deep hood of his nondescript cloak, will keep him from all but the least casual view.

A voice from within: “Are we there?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Well, get the door open then.” Two of them bustle, and he fusses like a hen until he can be plucked from the carriage, cane-first. It doesn’t suit him, he thinks – the man is tall, broad-shouldered, and, before pain raddled his features, cast _petulant_ as the dominant one, he was surely handsome. Now lines that show the pinch and passage of frustration and discomfort and – oh yes – _fear_ are etched into him.

He schools his face. Won’t do to be smiling. Not yet.

He steps forward from the shadows. “Are you the Marquis?”

“What?” A sharp look. “Yes. Yes. You’re expecting me, yes?”

“Yes, my lord.” He projects a calm that edges on humble, read the right way.

“Very well, take us in.”

“My lord,” he says, inclining his head into a mild shake, still soft, “I’m afraid your men must stay out here.”

“Impossible.” There is steel there, but there is fear all around it like corrosion.

“I think the instruction you were sent were clear, my lord?”

He huffs. “To ‘come alone’. I can hardly be expected to drive myself all this way to–”

“Of course. But what needs to be discussed is a matter for your ears only.”

In the uncertain light of the dimming sky and the coach’s lanterns, he sees the man’s jaw clench, thinks his fists do too. Again he waits, expression mild as butter, but still the Marquis says nothing. He pulls his hood back. “My lord,” he says, gently, “if there is to be trust between both parties, it must start here.” The other looks hesitant, _need_ surfacing and eddying in him. “Your men will be provided for – food and drink, the night is mild enough.” And then, since command is needed, it would appear, he turns towards the building. “Come along,” and while there is a sharp in-breath from more than one of them, it’s only the Marquis’s stumbling clatter that he pays mind to, drawing it after him with a slow, confident stride.

Inside, the great space is dim, but he’s had a table set, candles lending a cosiness to bread, cheese, wine. He’s not an uncivilised man. Not on this occasion, anyway.

A small huff of astonishment from his guest, who appears to be slowly unstiffening after his journey. He sets a gentle pace towards the table, is mildly surprised when the other draws alongside him.

“And when will your master make his appearance?”

Mm. Shame. “My lord?” he says slowly, turning his face a little towards him.

The Marquis gives him a sidelong look. “Ah. My mistake.”

He quirks his head – a quick, sideways tilt, a blink – and the other makes the smallest of chuckles. They continue to the table, and he finds himself enjoying the surprise; he’d assumed that the man would bridle at being corrected or finding himself mistaken. Well, there are depths and layers here. Bound to be, given his history, even his current situation.

He draws out the Marquis’s chair, gives him time to seat himself, prop the cane, fuss himself into the correct distance from the table before moving to seat himself opposite hin. He watches him blink at the fare on the table – very good, if somewhat plain; he can only bend aside from his own nature so far, after all. Food was never a dance, an art, something to engage with through boredom or even to share. That came later – putting people at their ease. A lot later.

The Marquis watches his hands – blunt and battered, but scrupulously clean for this rendezvous – as he pours wine, offers bread. Trust is a commodity. He is a businessman. Clandestine, true, but the Marquis looks like he’d enjoy rough but respectable; direct but discreet; clean nails and calluses. If he’s surprised to find good, stemmed glassware on such a table, he makes no sign of it.

Noble or common, it seems the same rules apply when breaking bread together – the food comes first. So they tear, spread, sip, nod, proffer, murmur thanks, amid the quiet clink, slosh, bite, chew, rip. He even finds himself soothed by this, feels breath he hadn’t known constrained broaden a little.

“How was your journey?” he asks, at last.

The other grunts, reaches for another piece of bread. “Abominable.” He looks up, eyes almost meeting his. He makes a polite sound that the other interprets as “Go on…” so he does. He quickly loses track of the exact nature of the complaint. It ranges so many topics, takes in so many sins of carriage-makers, wainwrights, road-builders, coachmen (his own and others’), and the fact that this building is not on the post road from Paris. He props his chin on his folded hands, nodding at suitable intervals, and gazes at the man’s face – taking in the bitter droop of mouth and eyes, the paper-like nature of his skin, the quality of his teeth when they’re bared briefly, mirthlessly, like punctuation, the way his gaze lifts and drops with the spare gesticulations, but always somewhere over his right shoulder.

 ****He’s heard him talk before, of course, as he’s studied him, drifted in tightening spirals around his life, but this is the first time he’s had the opportunity to listen to the uninterrupted rise and fall of it, to have it directed towards him. He sounds like a man simultaneously leaning into and away from his aristocratic roots. The sound hobbles and lurches. With a twist of mouth he acknowledges the irony.

 ****“... what I don’t understand is: why _here_ , in this Godforsaken…”

He stirs, blinks. “I don’t wish to be overlooked, my lord and neither, I believe, do you. Here we can be… quiet. Focused.”

“Ah. And this focus?”

“I believe that our interests cross at a more than one point.”

The Marquis turns his body away a little, rests his hands on the head of his cane, peers at him somewhat sidelong. He immediately looks both more present and more cautious.

Oh.

The smallest of smiles tweaks the side of his mouth as he lets his gaze drop away from the other’s face. “The current climate is one that benefits men like me, so that I find myself in an situation where the opportunities for greater wealth are… unusually high.”

“War is hardly unprecedented.”

His feels his head cock again – slant-return. The man makes connections faster than he’d have anticipated. “Aye, but on this scale? And this close to home?”

“Home. Hmm. But you’re not from Paris, are you?” And though it’s hard to tell under the constant freight of discomfort, that does look very much like a standard sneer. _Aye_. Right.

He feels his face shutting down. “Many men make their home in the capitol, from all over the world. Home is where…”

“... your heart is?”

“... my most substantial interests lie.” They gaze at each other for a stretched moment. He’s feeling the old anger rising again, and that’s no good.

Not yet, anyway.

The Marquis straightens, turning back around to face the table fully, and as he does so, everything clenches – fingers clawing at the tablecloth, expression a set of straight, tight lines. Colour drains from his face, pools in his neck even as he deliberately unwinds each locked part of him, trying to set it delicately back into place. It must have been painful indeed, he thinks, if it was this visible among company he does not trust.

“May I fetch you anything, my lord?”

“Hmm?” The eyes open, but are still clouded, though he is clearly making a valiant effort to return.

“For the pain.” He wonders if _pain_ is a big enough word any more.

A flare of nostrils. “Oh, it’s nothing. A mere spasm. I will have a little more of this _excellent_ wine, though.” He reaches forward on a hunch that clearly costs him more than he can currently afford.

“Nothing stronger?”

The still-clawed hands shake a little. The face clenches somewhat further again, this time in something akin to anger. The “I would not wish to presume” is icy.

Very well.

Eyes solemn, fixed upon the Marquis, he reaches and pours a glass of not wine, but water, reaches into an inside pocket and pulls out a packet. He checks it briefly and pours a small trickle of it into the water, swirling it to let it dissolve before, after a quick peer at the Marquis, adding a little more. When he sets it down and pushes it towards him, the man couldn’t have looked more astonished. Or offended.

“I think, my lord,” he says, gently, pushing it an extra fraction of an inch towards him, “that you’ve gone about as far as willow bark and aqua vitae can take you, haven’t you?” Not to mention the cupping, the leeches, the fasting, the prayers, the remedies that are little more than guesswork from men wishing to elevate their gambles on a desperate man’s flesh and blood into art.

The Marquis’s nostrils flare white for a moment, air coming in hard through his teeth. He looks as though he’s about to express umbrage, but instead nods, tersely. There is a need in his eyes. He knows all about _need_.

And he knows all about feeding.

“It offers relief from pain and, I’m told, a sense of wellbeing.” He smiles slightly again. “I have no wish to poison you, my lord – quite the opposite. But if you would prefer I fetch someone to taste this…?”

He unclenches his jaw enough to ask: “But not yourself?”

“No, my lord.” Regretful, solemn, steel-cored.

The Marquis blinks at him for a long moment. Then, faster than he would have predicted, his hand snaps out to the belly of the glass and pulls it to his face where he inhales for a moment. Clearly what he senses neither disturbs him nor summons anything up in him except determination, as he takes a slow sip, grimacing lightly, and swallows.

“Well, my lord?” He tries not to break the hush too much.

“It is… bitter.” He sets it down gently in front of him.

He nods. “Have you known a medicine that wasn’t?”

A small bark of a laugh. “Well-said!”

They wait for a good while in utter silence, him stone-still, the other swaying slightly, fingertips stroking in small bursts over the base of the glass, flickering in counterpoint to his eyes. Whatever the Marquis sees tightens his fingers around the stem of the glass and he raises it, grins tightly over the top of it, and takes it down in two determined swallows. He finds his own throat working in sympathy, keeps his gaze determinedly neutral.

The Marquis sits with it for another while, gaze still somewhere over his right shoulder, then places the empty glass with its thin residue on the table and pushes it away delicately, a fingertip touch, reaches for his wine, washes the taste away, and sighs then, startled a little, sighs again, deeper, eyes going distant.

Quicker than he would have thought. Interesting.

“That is…” a smiles hovers on him in flickering hints. “That is…” He turns, meeting his eyes fully for the first time. He smiles back at him. He has seen this look before, but never quite so clear – those bitter lines relaxing, a weight dropped that has been a part of you for so long that its departure seems almost like loss.

Colour comes, finally, to the Marquis’s face. His whole demeanour softens and, for a swaying, perilous moment, he fears he’s misjudged the dose and the man will swoon in front of him. But it’s only ecstasy; a profound transportation, true, but he’s in no danger of collapse.

There’s that steel, after all.

He watches the broad shoulders settle, possibly for the first time in years, sees his head rock, purposefully, on a neck that is easing tension, methodically, into the space that now surrounds it.

The Marquis grins at him, positively impish. “I suppose you would like to talk business?”

He lets his head drop forward slowly so that he’s looking at him through his lashes, right palm a graceful, curving path of what-you-will.

The Marquis chuckles. “Very well, then.”

*

In the end, it’s simple – as he told him, their interests overlap. He will never move where the Marquis moves, and the same goes the other way. As one rises, he can pull the other higher.

Nothing could be simpler, or more risky. He is betting – well, not quite all – on this man and his ambitions, his needs. He’s betting that hunger trumps honour every time, and that’s one of the surest wagers he knows.

This man wants to rise as high as his bastard blood will let him, and if that means making coin – his coin – stand where purity will not, then so be it.

And if expanding his market means putting his trust in the hands of a man who was raised to despise and fear everything that he is, for fear of falling to it, so be it.

Their compact needs no written contract; at the close of their meeting, he carries a leathern satchel containing the first two hundred livres to the door and hands it to the footman, who looks mildly disgruntled but mostly resigned to being summoned from a game of cards his master would no doubt tut over. The others scramble to make themselves presentable and one stuffs the last of their meal into his pockets. There’s one to watch for later.

They all stiffen and nod deeply as their master emerges over his shoulder – making his way easier and faster than earlier, and the sharp bargain he’s driven has included access to this ongoing ease. Why burden his lordship with talk of how enough will grow over time? They have toasted each other in good wine and knowing smiles. Money has changed hands, and slippery notions of ownership will come later.

The Marquis pauses in the doorway. “Mmh,” he says, and he turns to see his head tilted back, eyes shuttering. “That jasmine is exquisite.” He murmurs a little in response. The man turns to him, lowers his face again, barely a hint of his earlier stiffness in his movements. “We have not yet shaken hands, as I believe is the custom.” Under his sly smile is the unheard “among people like you”. He matches him gesture for gesture and raises his hand, feels the smoothness of nobility clasp him at last.

“My lord.”

“Monsieur.” He turns, still touching, scans his staff, pauses theatrically. “And how shall I name you?”

He lets the moment stretch under his unmoving smile as the Marquis’s becomes a notch less certain. “Grimaud,” he says, finally. “Lucien Grimaud.”

He nods. “Grimaud,” elongating the first part with relish in that confounding accent of his. He will have to get used to hearing his name in such a mouth. “It occurs to me,” he adds, quietly, fingers shifting ever so slightly in Grimaud’s rougher grip, “that we need someone in the Red Guard in advance of my…”

“Accession?”

“Hah. Yes.”

“Very wise, my lord. If you would, please leave that with me.”

“You know a man?”

“I believe I know a lever.”

“Ah. Best I don’t know, perhaps.”

He inclines his head, squeezes gently before letting go. “Perhaps so,” still the softly-spoken ruffian.

Watching the carriage depart, he spares an unaccustomed moment to wonder what Féron saw that determined him to take the draught. Men who can face down the prospect of death in their desperation he can use. Those who actively seek it? Less so.

Shaking his head, he makes his way indoors to extinguish what remains of the light.

**Author's Note:**

> There is an attitude (of which I used to be just as guilty, and not that long ago) that dictates that fanfic writers are “lazy”. No world-building, they argue; the characters already developed for you, they sneer.
> 
> How many of them have delved into the seventeenth century opium trade, the correct honorifics for different ranks of nobility, studied ancient maps in squinting detail, let alone stared at other people’s Pinterest boards and fandom wikia (while trying valiantly to avoid spoilers – somewhat unsuccessfuly, it has to be said) to ensure that they – not so much describe the right thing as avoid describing the wrong thing? And that was just for this work.
> 
> Good job I absolutely love it. 😉


End file.
